Sometimes being spontaneous is the way to enjoy a project, but vegetable garden planning is essential if a healthy productive garden project is expected. As people in the country and cities are faced with less space, and less money for groceries, the idea of growing vegetables is a good one.
When many people think of a garden, they think of a commercial farm or greenhouse lot with perfectly straight rows of cabbage or corn as far as the eye can see. While beautiful, it can seem quite intimidating to the do it yourself gardener. Even a person that has an acre to plant can seem to have endless rows when it comes to weeding, fertilizing, or harvesting. For most smaller and compact gardens the idea of row cropping has all but disappeared. The idea of leaving enough space between rows for tilling to automate weed control wastes planting area that some gardeners do not have to spare.
A newer idea called intensive cropping is replacing the row cropping system especially for people who are using their yard as a vegetable garden. The idea of having a garden space in a front yard may not be appealing to neighbors or the homeowners association if there is one. But planting compactly and placing ornamental plants with the vegetables can make a visually appealing landscaping layout.
The downfall to intensive cropping is the necessity to weed by hand, so make sure the area of garden that is chosen is not going to be larger than the gardener has time to tend. Remember that the entire garden area does not have to be planted all at once. Combining multiple plantings of fast growing veggies combined with slow growers, gives the garden an ever changing look and feel.
Intensive cropping includes the idea of square layouts that are further divided into grids rather than straight rows. This system can allow for easier management of the plants by plots or squares rather than having to maintenance an entire area all at once. Using the system of planting fast growing, fast harvesting plants in the outer grids with slow growing plants in the center gives the slow growing plant room after the fast growing plants are harvested and gone.
Making a sketch of the entire area including the gridded areas and a listed of planned vegetables, and ornamental plants will make the vegetable garden planning an interesting project.
Alan Stables is a freelance writer on nature and gardening. For example he writes articles on growing broccoli, growing watermelon and other vegetable garden planning activities.
Article Source: Vegetable Garden Planning Down To The Basics
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